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The Justice Department has filed a fifty-three million dollar lawsuit against Lyft, alleging the ride-share giant systematically failed disabled riders. Federal prosecutors say the company neither updated its policies nor trained drivers on their legal obligations under disability law — a significant accountability moment for a platform millions depend on daily.
Shifting to Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers moved to block an impeachment effort targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who defended military operations in Yemen, Iran, and against alleged drug traffickers. Hegseth framed the challenge as an attack on American troops rather than on his own conduct — a framing that, for now, appears to have held politically.
And in a story that sits at the intersection of technology, culture, and public life, a new initiative called Plan for Public Intelligence is proposing a framework for how artificial intelligence could serve civic rather than commercial ends. The project raises a question that's becoming harder to ignore — who exactly are these systems being built for, and who gets to decide?
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